The Trump administration is considering appointing Robert Redfield, an HIV/AIDS expert at the University of Maryland Medical Center, as its next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to multiple reports.
Redfield would take on the role after Brenda Fitzgerald, who resigned in January explaining that she had intractable financial conflicts in health technology companies. Her resignation also came after Politico reported that she had invested in tobacco stocks.
The CDC oversees a wide-range of public health efforts, including smoking cessation programs.
According to Politico, Redfield is her favored replacement. The job does not require congressional confirmation.
Redfield is a professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. He also co-founded and directed the Institute of Human Virology a the University of Maryland, which seeks to discover cures and treatments for a variety of deadly viruses and immune disorders, particularly HIV. He was a career Army doctor who was one of the military’s chief AIDS researchers.
Former President George W. Bush had also considered Redfield for the CDC post and for director of the National Institutes of Health during his presidency. Redfield was not selected for either role but did serve on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS during Bush’s time in office.
Some controversy follows Redfield’s long career in the field. According to a 2002 article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Redfield had “clashed” with AIDS treatment advocates over whether to collect the names of people who test positive for HIV, rather than use anonymous codes. The Washington Post also reports that in 1991 Redfield was linked to a controversial effort in Congress to make healthcare employees test for HIV if they are involved in invasive procedures such as surgeries. The effort failed.
The agency’s current acting director is Anne Schuchat, who has been at the CDC since 1988.
